2401 Penitent Tangent
2401 Penitent Tangent was a Forerunner AI that was instilled as the Monitor of Installation 05, also known as Delta Halo. He was brought online before the activation of the Halo Array more than one hundred thousand years ago. Penitent Tangent was well-known among the other Monitors for being 'off' compared to them. 2401 carried out his duties for centuries until around three thousand years after the activation of the Halo Array when he was noted by fellow Monitor 343 Guilty Spark to be going insane. He would retain this state well into the 33rd Century, and would experience the strangest of events that occured on his ring. Biography Unbeknownst to a wide number of sentient creatures, 2401 may have had his roots as a captured Ancient Human likely from the Interstellar Empire that was in place at the time. This captured Human's personality was downloaded through the means of a device known as The Composer that transformed an organic creature into data. Though this is not one hundred percent certain and is only based on extrapolation of other Forerunner monitors that had suffered a similar fate, although it is quite possible that Tangent was programmed purely without any form of biological input from a 'tennant' essence. Regardless of his origins, 2401 was created for only one purpose, and that was the manning and the maintenance of Installation 05. Like his brothers, 2401 would have regard for the protocol that kept his ring spinning. After the activation of the Halo Array in approximately 101,000 BCE, he would continue to watch over his Installation, up until approximately 3000 years after the Array's activation, where 2401 would show some 'quirks' that the other Monitors did not expect. For some unknown reason, Penitent Tangent was beginning to show degeneration of his AI core. This was troubling for an Artificial Intelligence that was supposed to single-handedly watch over the entirety of a Halo ring. 2401's neglect of his ring led to an unexpected outbreak of a Containment Facility housing specimins of the parasitic alien race known as The Flood. The breach of such a facility meant that the now-free life parasites would swarm around the facility on the ring known as the Library. For untold centuries 2401 ignored this outbreak and during this time, he was captured by the alien lifeform known as the Gravemind, an amalgamation of a massive amount of Flood tissue that would group together to create a Gestalt intelligence. 2401 remained in its clutches for millennia and would be rediscovered when an army of Covenant arrived Delta Halo in November of 2552 followed by a single Human ship that arrived along with the fleet unbeknownst to its enemies. 2401 was encountered some time later through the Gravemind by a Human named John 117, and a Sangheili warrior named Thel 'Vadam (then 'Vadamee). 2401 was positively delighted to see a Reclaimer (John) after such a long time and began to explain that the Installation needed to be activated when the Gravemind silenced him. After this, Tangent was removed from the only real social interaction he had in thousands of years apart from the Gravemind. After the Gravemind vacated itself from Installation 05 in favor of moving to High Charity, the Monitor was free to wander around his halls, but after centuries of being in the grasp of the Gravemind and in keeping with his own insanity, he was barely aware of his surroundings, but had enough sense to have his own Sentinels try to repair as much of the damage as they could. He never performed a diagnostic on himself though which meant that he never discovered the extent of his own mental damage. List of Apperances *Halo 2 (First Appearance) *Deception Category:Forerunners Category:AI Category:Character